No Coast Bias

Four Commercials That Almost Ruined College Football Bowl Season

And just like that … it’s over. No more sweet, sweet Tuesday night MAC-TION. No more drooling Dr. Lou segments. No more Brent Musberger horndogging at AJ McCarron’s lady friend. (At least until next September.) Bowl season is a bittersweet time as we bid farewell to another year of college football. The only problem? We watch almost all the games live and there’s almost always only one on at a time. Live sports makes one of man’s greatest creations – the DVR – practically useless. And, sadly, you and I are the ones who suffer. Watching a live broadcast when there are no other games or quality programming on can be excruciating. It’s like coaches are burning timeouts just to piss you off. Like players are somehow TRYING to get injured. Like commercial breaks are taking FOREVER just to spite us. And the commercials … ooooh, the commercials. It’s an endless loop of pizza, car insurance and haircut pitches. It’s what I imagine hell to be like.

There are some commercials, though, that stand out above the others. Ones that are just so stupid, so poorly executed and just so overplayed that they actually ALMOST ruin the entire experience of bowl season. And I’m not even talking about the played out Aaron Rodgers/Discount Double Check spots or those ones from Taco Bell suggesting that bringing a 12-pack of diarrhea to a party makes you a hero. I barely notice those anymore. No, I’m talking about the ones that I’ve seen so many times now that I can recite each of them in their entirety. The ones that made me actually wish for a split second that college football season was over so I could be spared the agony of watching them any longer until March Madness returns and does it all again. This is my Mount Rushmore of the year’s worst bowl commercials.

5-Hour Energy – “What Did You Do the Last 5 Hours?”

5-Hour Energy has been making terrible commercials since it started slinging its liquid speed years ago, but this … this is something else. It has everything you love to hate about BRO culture: wife beaters, headbands, aviators, auto-tuned singing, the list goes on. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no way you can watch this and not want to punch the nearest breakable object squarely in the kisser.

There are so many questions that go unanswered in the thirty seconds it takes to watch this commercial. Is this guy actually any good at football or is he just an America’s Best Dance Crew castoff in pads? What is so special about this video that has people at skateparks freaking out – isn’t there a hundred of these videos a week on SportsNation? What is wrong with Bob Stoops voice? Is Stoops talking to this kid some kind of recruiting violation? Is Stoops even recruiting this kid or is he just a huge fan of viral videos on the Internet?

TaxSlayer.com – Anything with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and that Knight

It’s a commercial where they PRETEND to make another commercial. Dale Jr. says it best, “This is not good.” Makes you wonder if he was actually improvising when he delivered that line thinking about the actual spot he was making and the editors just left it in there. Maybe it’s just a pet peeve of mine, but I get angry when national brands make such terrible commercials. If you can afford to pay a NASCAR celebrity and put together a media buy with this much exposure, you can afford better acting and better script writing.

I heard some people say they actually thought these were cute and funny. WRONG. “I AMMM ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE!” The repetition of these screaming kids saying the darnedest things with ADD at every timeout got the best of me. I actually started to blame their parents … not for birthing them but just for signing the waiver to put them in these commercials to torture me. And what’s the deal with the dude asking the questions? Is that his natural speaking voice? Is he some kind of pedophile with a fancy haircut? Creepy vibe coming from that one.

1 Comment

Absolutely right about 5 Hour Energy. It’s like they hired some fresh new undergrads to make commercials. “Oh, people know Jim Furyk and he’s an athlete, he’d be a great spokesman!” He acts like he doesn’t give a damn.

“5 Hour Energy – hours and hours of energy.” Uh, yeah…five of them. We can count.

But yeah, the bro culture reference is right on. Also, who would give 5 Hour Energy for Christmas? If your boss gives you 5 Hour Energy, that means he’s noticed you’re slacking.